Another major limitation is the reception of Augustine's Confessions in modern psychology and philosophy. Furthermore, philosophers in the postmodern mindset use Augustine's Confessions to combat autonomy and question the egocentric modern self.
THE AUGUSTINIAN CONFESSION: THEOGRAPHY, DIALOGICAL LANGUAGE
I NTRODUCTION
In a sense, the supreme subject in the Confessions is not Augustine himself, but Augustine's healer. Third, Augustine's Confessions lie within the philosophical tradition of antiquity, which seeks a way to a happy life and has soul therapy as one of its main tasks.
T HEOGRAPHY AND CONFESSIONAL NARRATIVE
- A relational narrative: setting personal story in greater redemptive history
- The context that led to the narratives of conversion and Confessions
- Narrative and language in a rhetorician’s life
The image of the lost child places Augustine's story below the horizon of God's greater design for the salvation of the human race. As we will discuss in the following sections, salvation in Augustine's Confessions is also related to placing one's life under God's healing grace.
C ONFESSIO AND THE RESPONSIVE RELATIONAL LANGUAGE
- Under the conduction of Grace, responding in psalm language
- Confessio as creational personhood: responsive speech to grace in a personal I-thou
- Confessio: double movement of confession of sin and praise
- Confessio: responsive speech to grace as a manifestation of his self to God in the
Joseph Lienhard, “Augustine's First Treatise on Grace,” in The Confessions: Saint Augustine of Hippo, Ignatius Critical Editions, ed. Even Augustine's tongue was formed by God to confess God's own name (Conf. 5.1.1.) “The gracious word is God's first, then Augustine's; it is most truly Augustine's insofar as it is God's word in him. Neither would matter to be praised as one of the prestigious rhetoricians in the Roman Empire, as Augustine's fanciful words could not change God's love for him.
In the 20th century, Natan (Anatoly) Sharansky, a Ukrainian-Israeli politician, survived nine years as a Soviet prisoner by clinging to the language of the psalms. Augustine's life is understood in the context of being a renewed creature touched by God's new creation: In section 7.10.16 of the Confessions, Augustine describes how his perspective, a distinction between God and the world, changed through the books of the Platonists .
A UGUSTINE ’ S C ONFESSIONS AND PHILOSOPHICAL THERAPY : CONFESSION AS SOUL HEALING
- Take and use their gold: the adaptation of an ancient therapeutic ideal
- A therapeutic relational confession: a wounded patient and a divine Doctor
- The theology of the Christus Medicus model in Confessions
However, speech was not enough, as the ability to persuade rests on attention to the illnesses, limitations and circumstances of the recipient. Philo and the therapists of Alexandria lived in a cauldron of encounter between Greek culture and Jewish tradition in the first century of the Christian era. In the fourth century this debate deepened even further as Christianity became entangled with the political power of the late Roman Empire.
Augustine's Confessions can be described as a model of Christian therapeutic reappropriation of the ancient philosophical tradition. As a result, the use of the medical metaphor emphasizes Christological concentration and enhances the theological aspect of healing. Since the remedy for sin is to recognize one's own illness in the presence of the physician, confessional language is the path suggested for transformation.
C ONCLUSION
Augustine's therapeutic vision presented in the Confessions involves the realization of one's dependent nature moving toward transcendence, which causes him to let go of his pride through the language of the confession. Confessions is an autobiographical narrative that is created to be silent, 300 is a life that seeks to go beyond itself towards the love of God, it is a theography of a loving lover. Augustine's return to the humble posture of the confessio supports his constant longing for the highest good, God.
The movement of the heart toward its creative telos in a relationally responsive biblical language performs a therapeutic transformation of one's previously scattered inner life. Through prayerful confession, Augustine recovered the essential inner dynamism of his inner life and realized that his healing must be sustained by responding to this love. Into my soul I call you, for you prepare it to be your abode by the desire you inspire in it.
I NTRODUCTION
The therapeutic vision of Augustine's Confessions, established in its ancient context, is not self-evident to a contemporary audience, which is also immersed in a contemporary environment where psychology and therapeutic ideals are very present, while being very distant from Augustine's therapy. 302 It knows Freud's sofa, Jung's archetypes and seeks self-help books, but does not know Augustine's therapeutic confessio. The therapeutic model of confession has been readjusted in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by interpretive grids that are not his own. Among the readings that participate in a conversation about therapy in Confessions, this work discusses those that read Confessions in the field of psychology and the postmodern readings.
Questions arise whether psychological and postmodern readings help us to understand anew and recover Augustine's therapeutic ideal or, on the contrary, misread and misplace our reading of Confessions; consequently there are implications of not bringing the complete movement of the Augustinian therapeutic relational confession. In the case of postmodern readings, such as Jacques Derrida's that separate Augustine's therapy from his theological anthropology, the end result may be that the Augustinian therapeutic structure loses its proper meaning. See the consequences of what Philip Rieff calls the Freudian revolution in the emergence of a.
C ONSIDERATIONS ABOUT PSYCHOLOGICAL READINGS OF C ONFESSIONS
- The forefathers’ approach the Confessions
- The psychoanalytical and psychotherapeutic use of Augustine’s Confessions
- Synergy without complete harmonization: psychology and theology in dialogue
Susan Mennel, "Augustine's 'I': The 'Knowing Subject' and the Self," Journal of Early Christian Studies 2, no. In our previous discussions we sought Augustine's therapeutically oriented theological vision against the background of the ancient philosophical ideals. In summary, due to an emphasis in the psychological readings and confessions, suffice it to say that Augustine's own theological view of therapy has been neglected.
Theologians interested in Augustine's psychology have emphasized that the dialogue between psychology and theology does not need to be inaugurated, but renewed. Augustine's "take and use their gold," the plundering of the Egyptians, can be adapted as a picture comparable to a colonialist model.377 Current colonialists use psychological. Parsons, "Augustine's Analysts: Reflections on the Psychological Reception History of the Confessions," in A New History of African Christian Thought: From Cape to Cairo, ed.
P OSTMODERN APPROACHES TO C ONFESSIONS : AN A UGUSTINIAN RESPONSE
- So ancient and so new: why are his Confessions so attractive to postmoderns?
- Jacques Der rida approaches Augustine’s Confessions
- Love’s crossing: an Augustinian response
- Limits of a postmodern confession
Augustine's Confessions retells a personal story in an era of decline in the main metanarrative of his time. The High Middle Ages, which started in the eleventh century, saw the progress of agriculture and the birth of the first universities. The parable of the prodigal son, described in the Gospel of Luke, sets the framework for participation in God's greater plan of redemption.
Leo Charles Ferrari, “The Prodigal Son Theme in Augustine's Confessions,” Recherches Augustiniennes Et Patristiques, no. Even peace finds its proper meaning if it is lived in the light of the possibility of conflict. Without the proper theological content, the postmodern reading does not understand the kenotic relational dimension that is the fate of the Augustinian narrative.
C ONCLUSION
167 this happens, not only that we discover what ought to be done, but also that we do what we have discovered - not only that we believe what ought to be loved, but also that we love what we have believed.454. The postmodern view on narrative positively opens the egoistic subject to vulnerability, but does not fully absorb the Augustinian relational narrative that calls us to love in a relational egoism. The challenge remains to update Augustine's theological anthropology, without losing its "heart" and at the same time to deepen its relevance for the twenty-first century.
Bringing a psychological framework conceptually similar to the Augustinian heart, this work reframes the psychological discussion about Augustine, enabling interdisciplinary work with points of connection stemming from both sides. Our bridge building process is established in the pillars of Elementary Experience in Psychology and the Augustinian understanding of the heart. The former is Miguel Mahfoud's particular appropriation of the concept of elementary experience and its consequences for psychological work.
I NTRODUCTION
Rather than considering psychology and theology as rivals or enemies, this work instead pursues a different connection: instead of a neurotic patient or Confessions as a test case for psychological theories, an Augustinian interface with Elemental Experiential Psychology (EEP) involves content and form of an Augustinian theological anthropology offering its therapeutic contributions and possible applicability to contemporary psychology. In this section we put Augustine's ideas about the built-in need for transcendence in the form of the restless heart, which convey a dynamic theological anthropology of desire and love, in dialogue with a contemporary psychological approach. Our current chapter attempts to connect the Augustine Confessions, in particular the concept of the heart, with the work of the Brazilian phenomenological psychologist Miguel Mahfoud (1956-), who developed the concept of 'elementary experience' from the theological articulation of Luigi Giussani to psychology. to develop an approach called Elementary Experience in Psychology (EEP).
The two pillars are: Elementary Experience in Psychology and Augustine's concept of the heart, setting the tone for the conversation. To discuss Mahfoud's work, we are called upon to draw upon some of his sources, such as his academic journey, background in phenomenological psychology, as well as the influence of Luigi Giussani and the concept of elemental experience. However, Miguel Mahfoud's perception of a return to Elemental Experience brings contemporary audiences closer to Augustine's call to move in one's heart.
E LEMENTARY E XPERIENCE IN P SYCHOLOGY
- Mahfoud’s main source: Luigi Giussani’s The Religious Sense
- Miguel Mahfoud’s biographical and academic journey
The Religious Sense is not a book exclusively for the use of those who are part of the movement; not even for Christians or for those who believe. This section will focus on the theological anthropological roots of EEP, considering Giussani's concept of elemental experience as a creative appropriation of the anthropological idea of the religious sense. In 1957, Luigi Giussani published the first version of his work The Religious Sense, responding to the works of the Jesuit Jean Daniélou and the pastoral call of Cardinal Giovanni Montini to recover the importance of religious sense in a changing culture.
Human destiny is to be found in the affirmation and recognition of the Absolute. Giussani's emphasis relies on the union of anthropology and Christology, on how the presence of Christ affected the human experience of the first disciples. God Becomes Man, The Word Made Flesh, brings authentic human experience to the center of the Christian life.
T HE HEART IN C ONFESSIONS
- Reading Confessions through the heart
- Thoroughly Biblical, particularly Augustinian: the Meanings of Cor
A D IALOGUE BETWEEN A UGUSTINE AND E LEMENTARY E XPERIENCE IN P SYCHOLOGY
- Elementary Experience and the Augustinian cor
- The recognition of an experiential relational dynamism: conceptual convergence and
C ONCLUSION
T HE A UGUSTINIAN T HERAPEUTIC C ONFESSIO
T HE R ECEPTION OF A UGUSTINE ’ S C ONFESSIONS IN C ONTEMPORARY P SYCHOLOGY
T HE I NTERDISCIPLINARY P URSUIT : A UGUSTINE AND E LEMENTARY E XPERIENCE IN
F URTHER T HEOLOGICAL P ERSPECTIVES
